Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Why is it so?

Clinicians generally give the lectures that I find the most interesting. I won't say that they give the most interesting lectures, as this clearly depends on your point of view and personal interest.

However, I have noticed that psychiatrists as a group tend to give the most interesting and engaging lectures of all. Their voices are very natural and conversational in tone even as they lecture on academic topics, their communication skills are excellent, they look relaxed, and of course, they tend to have fantastic (yet anonymous) anecdotes.

It isn't just me who feels this way - other people I am close to who have no interest in psychiatry also love these lectures.

Perhaps we are lucky in our group of lecturers at my university. Perhaps psychiatrists who lecture also perform a lot of academic work and are used to lecturing large groups. Maybe spending all day communicating with patients rather than performing dry scientific research helps. Or is it that a lot of people go into psychiatry because they enjoy communicating and expressing themselves verbally to begin with?

5 comments:

You know which lectures i HATE the most? Researchers'!! Not to knock the researchers since i used to do it full time and i hope to continue clinical research one day as a doctor, but their lectures are always so detailed! They usually have uninteresting, cluttered slides, and they usually spend the last 10 minutes talking about their specific work. It used to stress me out (the amount of detail they go into) but i've learned that we are not expected to memorize every word they've said! Yeah!

True, Liz. I feel bad for them because they generally seem like nice people, but when they launch right into the details without explaining where these details fit into the basics I just get lost. My favourite part about those lectures is when they start talking about how their research fits into clinical treatment and diseases - it is usually the only part I ever remember!

I think psychiatrists more than any other doctors have to work on building that level of human engagement and developing connections with people. So it's probably no surprise that they make for good lecturers.

Also it's my experience that a lot of the psychiatrists I've worked with seem to genuinely enjoy teaching and mentoring. Certainly they were happy to answer the questions bounced off them by this particular student nurse (now in the process of finally qualifying). :)

I may be stereotyping here, but the worst doctors I've found in terms of people skills seem to be radiologists - it just seems to attract doctors who prefer staring at a computer screen to interacting with people.